US hounds accusers over claims of Lockerbie crash cover-up

[This is the headline over an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that was published in issue 688 of the Electronic Telegraph on this date in 1997. As reproduced on the website DCDave.com it reads as follows:]

The US Justice Department appears to be waging a campaign of persecution against those who have challenged the official explanation of the Lockerbie disaster.

The FBI has used its immense power to sift through the background of whistle-blowers, investigators, and their employers, searching for vulnerabilities that could be exploited in a criminal prosecution.

The chief targets have been those who allege that the bombing of Pan Am 103, which took 270 lives on Dec 22, 1988, was an Iranian-Syrian plot that exploited a security breach in a bungled CIA operation. The US government says this is a conspiracy theory cooked up by the US Aviation Insurance Group (USAIG), the underwriters for Pan Am, to try to avoid liability for up to $500 million in damages for families of the victims. Both the US and British authorities insist that the bombing was the work of Libyan terrorists.

Insurance disputes of this kind are typically adjudicated in civil court. But the Justice Department began an extremely aggressive criminal investigation of Pan Am's lawyers and insurers. The investigation, begun in 1992, was unable to muster evidence of a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Lockerbie case. But after broadening the scope of its inquiry the FBI managed to sustain a case of fraud against the former chairman of USAIG, John Brennan. This involved insurance claims over a 1987 crash of a USAir commuter plane. Brennan was convicted in July 1996. He is expected to be sentenced later this month. USAIG has accused the government of engaging in a malicious vendetta.

The Justice Department was less successful in its efforts to destroy Juval Aviv, an expert on terrorism employed by Pan Am's insurers to investigate the bombing. He was acquitted on federal charges of fraud last December after an ordeal lasting more than four years. Aviv, head of a New York security firm, Interfor, was indicted in 1995 for supposedly defrauding a client, General Electric, in a minor security contract involving a fee of $20,683.

But General Electric had never issued a complaint. FBI agents nevertheless visited Aviv's clients demanding files. They were the same agents, Chris Murray and David Edward, who had conducted the Lockerbie investigation. "The whole thing was obviously trumped up in revenge for his role in the Pan Am 103 disaster case," said a juror afterwards.

Aviv has now filed a claim alleging malicious prosecution, violation of constitutional rights, and the launch of a campaign to discredit him "in retaliation for his report to Pan Am".

It was Aviv's report in 1989 that first sketched the outlines of a cover-up. He claimed that a rogue CIA unit had allowed a Syrian drug ring to smuggle heroin on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt to New York. He said this was to gain help in the release of US hostages in Lebanon. But the operation was penetrated by Iranian-backed terrorists who exploited the Pan Am channel to plant a bomb on flight 103.

"Aviv stirred up a lot of trouble, playing on the emotions of the families," said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counter-intelligence for the CIA. "He goes around saying that he used to be a member of Mossad, but the office of the Israeli prime minister has written a letter denying it. The man's a fraud."

But documents introduced at his trial paint a more complex picture. An internal FBI memo, marked secret, confirmed his "past association with the Mossad". Other documents corroborated his claim to have served as a security consultant to the FBI, Secret Service and other US agencies. Aviv believes that he was indicted in 1995 to destroy his credibility just as claims of a Lockerbie cover-up were gathering momentum. A film that supported his theories, The Maltese Double Cross, was about to be shown in Britain for the first time. It was never broadcast, but families of the victims had a private screening.

The US embassy in London, joined by the Crown Office, went on the offensive, calling him a "fabricator ... recently arrested in the US for defrauding an American company".

The same treatment was meted out to another source for the film, Lester Coleman, who had worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The embassy said he was "a fugitive from justice, wanted in the US for perjury related to the Lockerbie case and for passport fraud".

Coleman was indicted in 1993, four days before the British launch of his book, Trail of the Octopus - still unpublished in the US - confirming that the American government was indeed running "controlled" heroin deliveries from Lebanon on Pan Am flights out of Frankfurt.

He returned to the US from exile in Sweden last year to clear his name and now awaits trial in New York. The US government's actions clearly indicate that something is amiss in the Lockerbie case. Fabricators are usually ignored, so perhaps it is time to pay closer attention to the charges of Juval Aviv, Lester Coleman, and apostles of the "Syrian Connection".

Lockerbie story heads to Hollywood

This is the headline over a story in Scotland on Sunday. In fact, what is revealed is the forthcoming publication of a novel, Flight 103, on 24 January 2008. This is a fictionalised account of the Lockerbie disaster by Juval Aviv, writing under the pseudonym Sam Green. It takes the line that Iran, not Libya, was responsible for the atrocity (which is not surprising given that Aviv was the author of the Interfor Report for Pan Am after the disaster, which arrived at the same conclusion). That a film based on the book might be made seems mere speculation. For the full story, see:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland/Lockerbie-story-heads-to-Hollywood.3616402.jp

For more on Juval Aviv, see the 27 October post on this blog:
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/10/juval-aviv.html

Bush and Thatcher "agreed in April 1989 to bury the truth"

[On this date in 1992 an article by Jeffrey Steinberg headed Al-Kassar arrest revives scandal of Bush role in Lockerbie coverup was published in Executive Intelligence Review. It is an interesting historical piece reflecting some of the theories doing the rounds at that time. A few excerpts follow:]

Just when George [H W] Bush thought that he had forever buried the Lockerbie scandal, authorities in Spain early in June nabbed fugitive narco-terrorist Mansur Al-Kassar. As a result, one of the President's worst fears may have been revived.

Al-Kassar, a Syrian national with ties to the regime of Hafez Assad in Damascus, had been accused in 1989 of masterminding the Dec 21, 1988 bombing of Pan American Airlines Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people perished. 

At the time of the Lockerbie tragedy, Al-Kassar had been secretly employed by the US government as the so-called "second channel" negotiating the release of American hostages held in Beirut, Lebanon. Al-Kassar had, according to congressional testimony, received an estimated $2.5 million from Oliver North's secret Iran-Contra Swiss bank accounts for his role in providing Soviet-made weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. Al-Kassar's ties to the Reagan and Bush administrations apparently continued long after the IranContra scandal was exposed and North, Adm John Poindexter, and others were booted out of the government.

According to a report prepared by former Israeli intelligence officer Juval Aviv, Al-Kassar was still working with a CIA team in Frankfurt, Germany in the autumn of 1988, when he agreed to help Syrian-sponsored terrorist Ahmed Jibril, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, plant the bomb on board Flight 103. According to the Aviv study, Al-Kassar had infiltrated several members of his Bekaa Valley heroin-smuggling ring onto the baggage handling crew at Frankfurt airport, and they had been able to bypass Pan Am security to plant the bomb on the plane, using the same modus operandi by which they were regularly smuggling heroin into the United States. (...)

Time magazine devoted its April 27 cover story to "The Untold Story of Pan Am 103." The article, by senior Time-Life correspondent Roy Rowan, revived the Aviv allegations about AI-Kassar's role in the Lockerbie massacre, and pointed to the Syrian's collusion with the Frankfurt-based CIA team. Rowan went beyond the initial Aviv report and published new details:

• In January 1990, Pan Am attorney James Shaughnessy, Aviv, and a former US Army polygraphist traveled to Frankfurt to administer lie detector tests to two Pan Am I baggage handlers, Kilin Caslan Tuzcu and Roland O'Neill. Both men were on duty the day Flight 103 blew up. According to testimony given by the polygraphist to a Washington, DC federal grand jury, both men flunked the tests. The specific areas in which he said the two men were most clearly lying dealt with the switching of bags and the planting of the bomb aboard Flight 103. 

• After Pan Am arranged to have Tuzcu and O'Neill travel from Frankfurt to London on a pretext of company business, British authorities refused to detain or arrest the men, claiming that they viewed them as "scapegoats." 

This bizarre behavior of the British authorities lent credence to charges first published by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson in 1990 that President Bush and then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had secretly agreed in April 1989 to bury the truth about Syria's role in the Lockerbie tragedy because it would politically blow up in their faces. (...)

According to an Israeli source, following Al-Kassar's arrest, Spanish authorities searched his Marbella home and discovered a safe filled with diaries and business papers. The Israeli source reports that Al-Kassar is now spilling his guts to the Spanish police about his work for the Reagan and Bush administrations, the secret dealings between Washington and Damascus, and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, including his personal role in developing the cover story that Libyan intelligence, acting on its own, had blown up the plane. 

Juval Aviv, the New York City-based private investigator who conducted the initial investigation for Pan Am, is circumspect about where the Lockerbie probe will go from here: "The Time magazine story has fortunately put things back in perspective, and the arrest of Mr Al-Kassar could lead to a real breakthrough in the case. I still stand by my original investigative report. I have do doubt that the Syrians were deeply involved in the Locketbie bombing, as were the Iranians and elements of Libyan intelligence. In my initial investigation, I developed evidence of a kind of 'Terror, Inc' engaged in both narcotics smuggling and terrorism for hire, running out of the Middle East into Europe. I cited the involvement of Libya in the Pan Am plot and I even referenced Mr Al-Kassar's links to Tripoli. 

"I was deeply disturbed last year when the US Department of Justice indicted the two Libyans and left the world with the impression that Syria and Iran were blameless. Now, perhaps, in spite of that action and in spite of the events in federal district court in Brooklyn, the full story will come out."

Juval Aviv

For a hatchet-job on Juval Aviv, author of the Interfor Report on the destruction of Pan Am 103 and a contributor to Allan Francovich's film The Maltese Double Cross, see
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/secret-agent-sc.html

For a somewhat different view of Aviv, see http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/lockerbie/resources/story_aviv.html

The “true Lockerbie bomber”

[What follows is an item that was originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009. It prompted a spirited debate in the below-the-line comments:]

Lost CCTV tape 'reveals true Lockerbie bomber'

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Express. The following are excerpts.]

A secret videotape exists of the moment the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 was planted but has been “lost” by the authorities, it emerged yesterday.

The footage was shot by German intelligence at Frankfurt Airport and shows a baggage handler slipping a Samsonite suitcase rigged with explosives onto a luggage trolley.

Investigator Juval Aviv obtained the tape and passed it to the now defunct airline, which placed copies in safe deposit boxes around Europe.

He said the CIA has denied the tape exists as it would reveal the US agency’s role in the bombing and clear the name of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

The BKA, the German equivalent of MI5, which was monitoring the Pan Am terminal, has lost the original tape and the US airline collapsed in 1991.

Mr Aviv said that in 1988 a secret CIA unit was allowing Middle Eastern criminals to smuggle heroin into America via Frankfurt.

The CIA wanted to secure the release of US hostages in Beirut and was also using the profits to buy weapons for operations in Central America.

“The video shows a baggage handler called Roland O’Neill,” said Mr Aviv. “He picks up the suitcase and realises it is heavier than usual. He goes to the phone and makes a call.

“Then he takes the case and puts it on the trolley. All the phones were tapped, so I also had a tape of the phone call.

“O’Neill called the CIA guy at the embassy in Bonn. He said, ‘This is O’Neill, I have the suitcase but it is much heavier than usual’. The CIA guy says, ‘Yes, we know, let it go’.”

The baggage handler, a German who had lived in America, later told Mr Aviv that he was working for the US Government and he thought the suitcase contained drugs. (...)

Mr Aviv, a former Mossad agent who hunted the killers of the Israeli 1972 Olympic team, was hired to investigate the tragedy by Pan Am.

In his confidential report he describes the videotape as “the gem” that proves Iranian-sponsored terrorists carried out the atrocity.

Terror warlord Ahmed Jibril became aware of the CIA-approved drug route and realised he could use it to bomb a Western passenger jet.

Yesterday, Mr Aviv said: “Most of the people involved were scared to pursue it as the CIA were after them. I work with Dr Jim Swire and the families and my dream is that one day we will see the truth come out.”

Lost CCTV tape 'reveals true Lockerbie bomber'

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Express. The following are excerpts.]

A secret videotape exists of the moment the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 was planted but has been “lost” by the authorities, it emerged yesterday.

The footage was shot by German intelligence at Frankfurt Airport and shows a baggage handler slipping a Samsonite suitcase rigged with explosives onto a luggage trolley.

Investigator Juval Aviv obtained the tape and passed it to the now defunct airline, which placed copies in safe deposit boxes around Europe.

He said the CIA has denied the tape exists as it would reveal the US agency’s role in the bombing and clear the name of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

The BKA, the German equivalent of MI5, which was monitoring the Pan Am terminal, has lost the original tape and the US airline collapsed in 1991.

Mr Aviv said that in 1988 a secret CIA unit was allowing Middle Eastern criminals to smuggle heroin into America via Frankfurt.

The CIA wanted to secure the release of US hostages in Beirut and was also using the profits to buy weapons for operations in Central America.

“The video shows a baggage handler called Roland O’Neill,” said Mr Aviv. “He picks up the suitcase and realises it is heavier than usual. He goes to the phone and makes a call.

“Then he takes the case and puts it on the trolley. All the phones were tapped, so I also had a tape of the phone call.

“O’Neill called the CIA guy at the embassy in Bonn. He said, ‘This is O’Neill, I have the suitcase but it is much heavier than usual’. The CIA guy says, ‘Yes, we know, let it go’.”

The baggage handler, a German who had lived in America, later told Mr Aviv that he was working for the US Government and he thought the suitcase contained drugs. (...)

Mr Aviv, a former Mossad agent who hunted the killers of the Israeli 1972 Olympic team, was hired to investigate the tragedy by Pan Am.

In his confidential report he describes the videotape as “the gem” that proves Iranian-sponsored terrorists carried out the atrocity.

Terror warlord Ahmed Jibril became aware of the CIA-approved drug route and realised he could use it to bomb a Western passenger jet.

Yesterday, Mr Aviv said: “Most of the people involved were scared to pursue it as the CIA were after them. I work with Dr Jim Swire and the families and my dream is that one day we will see the truth come out.”

"One of the most dangerous men in the world"

The reference is to Monzer al-Kassar, who was extradited in June to the United States to stand trial for having supplied weapons to the FARC guerilla movement in Colombia. The German Kurtz Report features an article about him headlined (in translation) "Arms dealer or hostage saviour?" His alleged connection to Lockerbie is outlined in the following two paragraphs:

'Wenn Al Kassar, auch bekannt unter den Namen Abu Munawar und Al Taous, vor dem Bundesgericht erscheinen wird, kommen vielleicht noch andere Verbrechen zur Sprache. Richard Marquise, der frühere FBI-Beamte, der die Lockerbie-Ermittlungen leitete, empfahl dem Justizministerium, Kassar auch nach Lockerbie zu befragen. In seinem Schreiben bezog er sich auf die Behauptung des früheren israelischen Agenten Juval Aviv, Al Kassar habe als Mittler zwischen Iran und der amerikanischen Regierung im sogenannten “October Surprise Project” gehandelt, bei dem Waffen für den Iran gegen die Freilassung der amerikanischen Geiseln. Als Belohnung habe er Heroin aus dem Bekaa-Tal auf Flügen der amerikanischen Fluglinie Pan Am über Frankfurt in die USA liefern dürfen. Dabei sei die Drogenlieferung durch die Bombe ausgetauscht worden, die über Lockerbie explodierte.

'Der mögliche Lieferant des Zünders, Edwin Bollier, sollte im Rahmen des Todesermittlungsverfahrens Dr. Uwe Barschel vernommen werden. In den Akten der Lübecker Staatsanwaltschaft zum Fall Barschel findet sich auch eine sogenannte “Sonderakte Al Kassar”. Einen Monat vor der Verhaftung Al Kassars erschien das Buch “Deckname Dali” des ehemaligen Agenten des Bundesnachrichtendienstes (BND) Wilhelm Dietl. Darin beschreibt er, wie er auf Al Kassar angesetzt war, wie er wie in James Bond-Filmen dessen Akte auswendig gelernt habe, ihn mit Hilfe eines Observationsfotos des Bundeskriminalamts (BKA) auf einem Empfang der Österreichischen Botschaft in Damaskus identifizierte und ihn dann in Wien und Madrid traf.'

[I am grateful to a reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, for the following translation:

'When Al Kassar, also known under the names Abu Munawar and Al Taous, appears before the US Federal Court, other crimes may also come up. The former FBI agent, Richard Marquise, who led the Lockerbie investigation, has recommended to the Justice Department that Kassar should also be interrogated in connection with Lockerbie. In his writing, Marquise referred to the claim of the former Israel agent Juval Aviv, that Al Kassar functioned as an intermediary between Iran and the American government in the so-called “October Surprise Project”, whereby weapons were delivered to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages. By way of reward, he was supposedly allowed to fly heroin into the States from the Bekaa valley on Pan Am flights out of Frankfurt. In the course of this, the drug delivery was replaced by the bomb which exploded over Lockerbie.

‘It is claimed that the possible supplier of the fuse*, Edwin Bollier, was questioned in the context of the investigation into the death of Dr Uwe Barschel**. In the files of the Lübeck Public Prosecutor’s Office concerning the Barschel case, there is a so-called “Special File Al Kassar”. The book “Deckname Dali”, by former German secret service employee Wilhelm Dietl was published (in German) one month before the arrest of Al Kassar. In this book, he describes how he was instructed to track Al Kassar; how he, in the manner of James Bond, learned Al Kassar’s files by heart; how he identified Al Kassar at a reception held by the Austrian Embassy in Damascus, with the help of photos supplied by the German Federal Criminal Police Office; and how he met him in Vienna and Madrid.'

*Although it is the timer that Edwin Bollier’s company is alleged to have supplied, the German word “Zünder” means “fuse” or “detonator”.

**For information on the fascinating story of Dr Barschel, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Barschel and (in German, but much more detailed) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Barschel]

Also relevant is this post dating from 5 December 2007.

Juval Aviv and the truth about Lockerbie

The above is an English translation of the title of a lengthy post, in Spanish, on the El Mossad blog. Michael Scharf, Jim Swire and I are quoted but, since Spanish is not one of my languages, I am unable to comment further on the piece. For more on Juval Aviv, click here.

23 December 2007: "There is still an innocent person in jail"

[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined Lockerbie story heads to Hollywood that was published in Scotland on Sunday on this date in 2007:]

Juval Aviv was behind the book that inspired the acclaimed Steven Spielberg blockbuster Munich.

His latest project is a fictional account of the Lockerbie disaster – in which 270 people were killed – and he hopes that the Jaws and ET filmmaker can make it into a major movie.

Flight 103 – which alleges that the Iranians and the American secret services were complicit in the atrocity – will be published early in the new year. The book is expected to become an international bestseller, and the former Mossad agent has revealed he is in talks with a number of high-profile Hollywood directors over the film rights. (...)

The former major in the Israeli Defence Force believes that [Steven] Spielberg would be the ideal man to bring his vision to the big screen.

"Steven is looking at the book right now. I worked closely with him on Munich and he is someone whom I admire greatly. My initial fear was that Munich could become little more than a Jewish James Bond movie. But Steven created a thought-provoking political movie, which showed the heavy toll that the assignment took on the agents who participated."

Aviv, who acted as lead investigator for Pan Am during the Lockerbie inquiry, admits that his book is a thinly veiled account of what he is convinced really happened in December 1988. [RB: Aviv’s report to Pan Am (the Interfor Report) can be read here.]

In the novel, retired Israeli agent Sam Woolfman discovers that Tehran ordered the destruction of an American plane in retaliation for the US downing an Iranian airbus, carrying 133 civilian partners, earlier in 1988.

The Iranians then enlist an experienced Palestinian terrorist, Ahmed 'The Falcon' Shabaan, to carry out the bloody reprisal.

In the book, the American secret services turn a blind eye to the plot and ensure that three CIA agents, who are due to blow this whistle on a internal heroin dealing racket, are aboard the doomed eponymous flight.

Woolfman, accompanied by his glamorous young Irish sidekick Orla Sheehy, discover that American Embassy staff around the world were warned not to board the Pan Am airliner.

The suggestion that Libya was not responsible for the atrocity was made forcibly by Aviv, who writes under the nom de plume of Sam Green, during the inquiry, but his evidence was rejected.

With a second appeal under way by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, the president of investigations firm Interfor is convinced that his version of events will finally be vindicated.

He said: "Flight 103 is written as fiction, but it is based solidly on real-life facts. The US Government urged me to change my report (to the inquiry), but I wouldn't and I fully stand by my version of events.

"I think 2008 will be the year when the truth finally emerges. There is still an innocent person in jail, but hopefully not for much longer."

US framing Libya to cover up something much darker?

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Martin Jay entitled Lockerbie: Did the CIA itself take down Pan Am 103? published on his Substack today:]

When Western governments used to do highly illegal operations, one of the biggest worries from the outset would always be: what if the press gets hold of this? Scrutiny from journalists for a long time was always the chief worry of the architects of dirty wars, cooperating with terror groups and paying the bad guys.

But since 9/11, the deep state has shifted its views towards media, no longer fearful of its opprobrium.(...)

What is the new relationship [between government and the media]? It is simply that as the internet took off around 2000, media giants realised that their business model of selling newspapers, based on independent journalism which held the state to account, was doomed. The new model to replace it would be to disinvest in journalism as we know it and replace it with a poorer cousin which not only moved it closer to the deep state – in particular the security services – but made it a content junkie for what the CIA, MI5 and Mossad could feed it. The result today is that if you really want to understand a subject and want to do deep research on it, it is highly unlikely you would go to mainstream media. And yet media giants continue to play an important role in shaping our lives and manufacturing a consent which still has the desired effect: keeping the elites in power. We have never seen a period since the invention of newspapers in the 17th century where there is a greater divide between the truth and the perceived truth – and whereby the latter is winning hands down. (...)

This comes about when the political elite allow the security services and journalists to together create an entirely false narrative which works because everyone wants it to be real. (...)

But when those same storytellers get together and re-write history by presenting to the public new documentation which has arrived under extremely dubious circumstances, then those countries can hardly call themselves democracies any more. Under such a farcical arrangement, justice can never be served – or even seen to be served. 

The Lockerbie case, where a US airliner fell from the sky over a sleepy Scottish town, killing all on board and 11 on the ground due to a bomb being placed on board, is a good example of how far the deep state can twist and corrupt judicial process as a means to an end. Bluntly, the Americans, after almost 40 years, want to frame the Libyans for the act of terrorism, as it helps them cover up a darker, more macabre role that they themselves played in the bombing. And yet, despite initially planting evidence in the original case in the Netherlands which neatly framed two Libyan intelligence officers, there has been no hue and cry about their tawdry handling of the case, which should be a scandal. Now it’s much worse. In recent days we have heard reports of new evidence which the Americans claimed to have found – such as accounts of the chief culprit’s own activities in Malta at that time, Semtex explosives believed to be in his office, and fanciful accounts of timers having an eleven-hour duration. All of this so far has come from new documentation which readers should be very cynical about.

But just very recently, an account from a former Mossad agent who was employed by Pan Am’s insurance company to investigate what really happened has thrown a light on why the Americans are so determined, after all this time, to keep the Libyan case alive. In a recent podcast interview, former Mossad assassin Juval Aviv explains how the CIA, from 1987, were allowing Hezbollah in Beirut to use Pan Am to send their own narcotics to the US and collect revenue from them. Reagan allowed this in exchange for keeping seven US/UK hostages alive. These weekly flights, usually from Beirut to Cyprus, then to London, then to the US, were run by CIA officers and were very lucrative for the Lebanese group.

To this day, media hardly touch on the point of these so-called ‘controlled flights’. Aviv’s three-month investigation in 1989 uncovered all the details, and because Pan Am was a client of his as an investigator, he came to the conclusion quite quickly that the Damascus-based Palestinian group which specialised in downing planes was the culprit, via its chief drug supplier from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.

What might have been in his initial report which caused him and his work to be marginalised was the bombshell revelation, also made in the podcast, that it was the Americans themselves who brought down the plane – which explains why, to this day, the Americans are going to extraordinary lengths to feed media with disinformation.

Aviv claims that the CIA knew about the bomb and allowed it to get on the plane so that it would kill three rogue officers who were also on the flight, planning to blow the whistle on the drug-running operation to Congress when they got back. Perhaps even more shocking is his claim that over 40 US government workers were ordered off the flight shortly before it departed, and that the drug money made in the US actually went towards buying arms for the Contras. In short, the CIA discovered the bomb plot and allowed it to go ahead so that their operations could not face the embarrassing ignominy which eventually happened to Reagan through the Contra scandal that followed. But besides all this, we have the most recent “evidence” which is being passed off as legitimate: a Libyan security agent’s testimony – secured through torture – being given the green light by a US judge. Nearly 40 years later, the statute of limitations against those accused is not replicated towards US prosecutors, it would seem, who are able to produce fake documents and blood-soaked sworn testimonies which put the Libyans in the frame. If you’ve ever wondered why Hollywood won’t make the movie of Lockerbie, it’s because Americans wouldn’t believe the real story.

The hidden scandal of Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a review by Steve James of John Ashton and Ian Ferguson’s Cover-up of Convenience—the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie that was published on the WSWS.org website on this date in 2002:]

John Ashton’s and Ian Ferguson’s work on the circumstances surrounding the destruction on December 21, 1988, of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland is worthy of careful study. It raises serious doubts, not only regarding the recent conviction of the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, now incarcerated in Barlinnie jail, Glasgow, but over the entire official presentation of events before and after the crash, from 1988 to the present day. They give indicators as to how the full facts regarding the atrocity which killed 270, perhaps 271, people might be uncovered and conclude with a series of searching questions which any genuinely independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster should direct toward various governments, intelligence services, and individuals.

Ashton and Ferguson have followed Lockerbie for years. Ashton worked as the deputy to the late British film maker Allan Francovich, whose film The Maltese Double-Cross, examined various alternative scenarios that have been advanced as an explanation for the Lockerbie disaster, favouring that the bombing was a consequence of a CIA controlled drug running operation utilised to spy on Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian armed political groupings and factions.

Ferguson is a journalist, who has written many articles on Lockerbie, and along with Scottish lawyer Robert Black, architect of the Camp Zeist trial, maintains the www.thelockerbietrial.com website.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the special Criminal Court verdict at Camp Zeist convicting al-Megrahi, Ashton and Ferguson have drawn together the fruits of long research and interviews with a large number of people involved in the disaster, including a number of current and former spies.

The authors do not proclaim that al-Megrahi is innocent. Rather, they review a large body of circumstantial evidence suggesting that responsibility for Lockerbie may lie primarily with the intelligence services of several Western governments, particularly the United States. They are highly critical of the role played by the media in parroting the twists and turns of the official line and note that no major British or US newspaper, radio, or TV channel has had the journalistic independence to undertake a sustained investigation of this most murky aspect of the disaster.

Ashton and Ferguson note that there were many general indications of a possible attack on an American flight in late 1988. After the 1988 American attack by the USS Vincennes on an Iranian Airbus, in which 255 pilgrims were murdered, Iranian broadcasts warned that the skies would “rain blood” in consequence. A Syrian backed Palestinian group with a history of attacks on passenger aircraft was known to be operating in Germany. Many staff at the US Embassy in Moscow altered flight plans to avoid Pan Am over the Christmas period.

More specifically, the authors suggest there may have been prior warnings of an attack on flight PA103. They imply that both the US ambassador to Lebanon, John McCarthy, and the South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha had their travel plans altered at the last minute in order to avoid PA103.

Others, including Charles McKee, a US Army Special Forces Major, and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s Beirut deputy station chief, uniquely amongst US officials, allegedly changed their plans at the last minute to fly on PA103. McKee had been leading a hostage rescue team in Beirut. One suggestion, and it is no more than that, is that these individuals were the target of a successful assassination attempt in which intelligence agencies themselves played a role.

According to the authors, from as little as two hours after the crash, US intelligence officers were at the southern Scottish site. Over the next days many more arrived. They were not looking for survivors or explanations as to the cause of the crash. They did not cooperate with local rescue services. Instead, they were searching for particular pieces of debris, luggage and particular corpses. Ashton and Ferguson cite finds of large quantities of cash, cannabis and heroin on the flight, as well as intelligence papers owned by McKee, whose luggage was removed and replaced. A report noting the location of hostages held in Beirut was apparently found on the ground. There were reports of helicopter-borne armed groups guarding and then removing a large box, and an unidentified body.

A police surgeon from Bradford, David Fieldhouse, insists that one body was moved, after it had been tagged and its location noted, while another disappeared entirely. Fieldhouse was subsequently victimised. Other concerns were raised by local police officers, some of which phoned Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who then began to take an active interest in the case.

Ashton and Ferguson detail the main alternative theory—that the bombing was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PLFP-GC). This was also largely the official position until 1991. Ahmed Jibril formed the PFLP-GC in 1968, when he broke away from the PFLP. The authors assert, on the basis of discussions with a number of spies, that the PFLP-GC were recruited by the Iraqi, Iranian, or Syrian governments to attack a US plane. When considering the motivation for such a terror operation, whether on the part of the PFLP-GC or any of their possible sponsors, the book is at its weakest. It gives very little insight into the politics of these governments or of the PFLP-GC, other than to make such observations as support for the PFLP-GC allowing the regime of Hafez Al Assad in Syria to appear to be supporting the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

The authors instead draw attention to the bombing by the PFLP-GC 18 years earlier, in 1970, of two aircraft destined for Israel—one survived with a two foot hole in the fuselage, the other, Swissair 330 to Zurich crashed killing 147 people—and another bombing 16 years earlier, in 1972. The PFLP-GC in 1988 certainly appears to have had a European operation based in Nuess in the Ruhr, Germany, intent on attacking US and Israeli targets. The group eventually blew up some railway lines used by US troop trains, planned an attack on an Israeli sports team, and became the target of a huge surveillance operation by German state security, the BKA. Their operation was hopelessly compromised. Raids by the BKA eventually discovered timers, guns, along with various electrical goods altered to contain explosives. Two PFLP-GC members were eventually jailed in 1991 for the train attacks.

Astonishingly, however, bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat was released on a legal technicality and left Germany. According to Ashton and Ferguson, Khreesat, who built the bombs used in the attacks during the 1970s, had by this time become a Jordanian spy in the PFLP-GC. Jordanian intelligence apparently has a close relationship with the Israeli Mossad and the CIA. Khreesat is still living in Amman, the Jordanian capital, under protection.

Ashton and Ferguson note an interview with Khreesat by the FBI, which was cited at the Camp Zeist trial but never reported in the world’s press, in which Khreesat alleges that one of his bombs went missing after the BKA raid. On this basis, the authors speculate as to whether the CIA had, with the cooperation of other intelligence agencies, played a more active role in allowing the destruction of the plane. They restate the suggestion that this might have been to prevent exposure of the CIA’s drug running operations from the Bekaa Valley, or for other reasons associated with US policy in the Middle East, particularly the aftermath of the Iran-Contra machinations. They suggest that a CIA approved suitcase, loaded with heroin from the Bekaa Valley, might have been swapped for one loaded instead with a bomb intended to kill McKee.

McKee and others had reportedly developed serious reservations about the drug-running operation; it having recently endangered their own lives through an aborted hostage rescue operation. The authors note that PA103 was brought down shortly after the election of ex-CIA chief George Bush, father of the current US president, when exposure of CIA drug running would have been highly embarrassing.

Those who have made allegations of possible CIA involvement include an ex-Mossad spy, Juval Aviv, hired by Pan Am to investigate the destruction of its aircraft, an erratic ex-US spy Lester Coleman, who at one point sought political asylum in Sweden, William Chasey, a Washington DC lobbyist, and Time journalist Roy Rowan.

Ashton and Ferguson trace the development of the official position of blaming Libya for the bombing. Bush called Margaret Thatcher in early 1989 asking for the inquiry to be “toned down”, at a time when Syria and the PFLP-GC were favoured suspects. Just over two years later, on November 14, 1991, simultaneous indictments were brought by the Scottish Crown Office and the US State Department against Libyan airline staff al-Megrahi and Lamen Fhimah. Days later, Bush announced that Syria, which had acquiesced in the 1991 US attack on Iraq, had taken a “bum rap”. The State Department put out a fact sheet to justify the change of position, claiming that previous pointers to the PFLP-GC and Syria had been cunning ruses by the Libyan government. UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said that no other countries besides Libya were targets for investigation. Four days later, the last Western hostages, including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, Terry Waite, were released from Beirut.

The authors thereafter recount the official line that the bomb, equipped with an MST-13 timer from MeBo of Zurich, was loaded in a Samsonite suitcase packed with clothes, which was inserted by Libyan agents onto flight KM180 from Luqa airport in Malta, transferred at Frankfurt to a feeder flight for PA103, and then shuttled to Heathrow, where it was loaded on the fated Boeing 747. This was the case presented in the Camp Zeist trial.

Ashton and Ferguson carefully summarise the numerous problematic aspects of all the prosecution evidence at the trial; the dubious visual identification of al-Megrahi by Maltese shop owner Tony Gauci; the contradictory and bizarre ramblings of CIA spy Abdul Majid Giacka, the so-called “star witness” at Luqa airport whose evidence collapsed in court; the contested luggage records at Frankfurt airport; and the claim by MeBo owner Edwin Bollier that he had been approached by the CIA and encouraged to frame Libya, and that the CIA had had an MST-13 type timer in their possession before 1988.

At Camp Zeist, the trial was in danger of disintegrating. By November 2000 few observers, including the book’s authors, expected anything other than an acquittal, or a not proven verdict which is available under Scottish law. But the verdict delivered on January 2001, which admitted that the prosecution case was full of holes and based on circumstantial inferences, nevertheless found al-Megrahi guilty, while his only alleged accomplice Fhimah, was acquitted.

Ashton and Ferguson by no means completely exonerate Libya or al-Megrahi. They note that his refusal to account for his activities on 20 December 1988 and his visit to Malta using a false passport cannot be dismissed. Trial evidence suggests that al-Megrahi indeed worked for Libyan intelligence and he has, so far, offered no explanation as to why he chose not to take the stand to defend himself. Many aspects of the whole business remain to be uncovered.

What the authors do is to cite 25 questions to which any genuinely independent inquiry must seek answers. These include:

* the circumstances of the warnings given prior to the disaster.

* the circumstances of the booking changes for Pik Botha’s entourage, and McKee and Gannon.

* the drug and cash finds at Lockerbie.

* the possibility of an extra body, the circumstances under which bodies were moved, and the circumstances of wrong police evidence given against David Fieldhouse at the 1989 Fatal Accident Inquiry.

* why Transport Secretary Paul Channon was able to announce that arrests were imminent and why Margaret Thatcher blocked a full judicial enquiry?

* the relationship of the British MI6 to the Iran Contra deals and why was the Foreign office official in charge of liaising with the US on Iran-Contra, Andrew Green, was put in charge of the Lockerbie investigation.

* the role of the CIA and MI6 in hostage deals made after the exposure of Iran Contra in 1986 and 1991.

* why Juval Aviv and others were never interviewed by the investigation authorities about the bombing. What were the circumstances of legal cases brought against Aviv and others?

* why did it take a year for the MeBo circuit board to be discovered, what were the circumstances of its discovery, and what were the connections between MeBo’s Edwin Bollier and the CIA?

* why did the CIA and the Scottish Lord Advocate seek to block access to CIA cables that were helpful to the defence?

Under conditions where the US government is refusing to investigate its own intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 terror attacks, any exposure of a possible CIA role in aircraft terrorism clearly assumes great significance. Earlier this year, al-Megrahi’s appeal against his conviction was thrown out, despite defence evidence that made a strong circumstantial case for the bomb having been loaded at Heathrow airport in London.

Following Tam Dalyell’s question in parliament, on March 26, there is a suggestion that police evidence relating to Lockerbie is being destroyed, and that yet another suitcase owned by another Special Forces member, Joseph Patrick Murphy, was at one point early in the investigation thought to contain the bomb.

Without making wild or unsustainable accusations, and despite serious political limitations, Ashton and Ferguson have provided an essential reference for anyone seeking to understand why a Boeing 747 should explode in mid-air killing hundreds of ordinary air travellers, and yet, more than 13 years later, there is still no generally accepted explanation of why it happened and who was responsible.